


Bite Your Tongue

by esljackzimmermann (QuietLittleVoices)



Series: crushes are hard. [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, M/M, endgame jack/bitty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 07:58:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5084098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuietLittleVoices/pseuds/esljackzimmermann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times someone had a crush on Eric Bittle, and one time it all worked out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bite Your Tongue

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Crush' by Brakes. Semi-companion to the first fic in the series, not necessary to read it though. 
> 
> For Justine aka bittyhoney on tumblr because she wanted everyone being 'lowkey hot for Bitty'.
> 
> Comments are encouraged :)

1\. Charlotte Rice

Charlotte walks over to the blonde boy making a castle in the sandbox and puts her small hands on his shoulder.

“Eric,” she says seriously. She can’t say her ‘r’s yet so it comes out sounding like a ‘w’ but she trudges on. Eric’s never made fun of it, even if all the other boys do. Eric is nice.

“My mama calls me Dicky,” he says, scrunching up his nose in a way that makes Charlotte giggle.

“Ducky,” she says between giggles.

That makes Eric smile, too - big and gummy.

“We should get married.”

Eric nods and then looks concerned. “Who’d marry us though?”

Charlotte thought about it. She didn’t know too much about getting married but she knew that when her aunt got married there was an old guy who said words her aunt had to repeat. “Mister Sharp,” she said decisively, because Mr. Sharp was old, and Eric seemed happy with that answer.

He stood up and held out a hand to her and she took it. “Let’s go find ‘im!”

 

2\. Sam Mason

Sam knows, in an objective but still kind of terrifying way, that Eric is cute. He’s the fifth shortest person on their co-ed hockey team, the shortest boy by three inches, and everything about him is small. Sam would almost say ‘delicate’ if he hadn’t seen the way that Eric skates and knew that there was a surprising amount of muscle hidden away there.

“Hey,” Sam says quietly as they walk out of the locker room, always seeming to be the last two to leave. “You did good today.” He means it; Eric had scored their game winning goal and it had been beautiful. He’d hugged Sam afterwards and Sam was decidedly not thinking about how Eric’s head fit under his chin.

Eric grinned and blushed all the way up to his ears. He looked down at his shoes, shifting his bag further behind his back. “Thanks. You did good, too.”

Sam couldn’t help the smile on his face after that. And if his step was a little lighter, well, they’d just won their first game of the season, hadn’t they?

 

3\. Malcolm Fisher

Despite what his sisters teased him for, Malcolm hadn’t chosen Samwell because his favourite vlogger had mentioned applying. And he absolutely didn’t watch the hockey games because the aforementioned vlogger was on the team. No seriously, Sarah, shut up, hockey is interesting.

It all sounded just fine until anyone realized that Malcolm didn’t know how the point system in hockey worked and didn’t know a single professional hockey player’s name.

Ok, maybe he had a crush. Not that he’d admit it to his sisters.

I think Eric Bittle is in my English class, he texts to Lisa.

She responds with a startled emoji and then says Go say hi!!!!

Malcolm takes a deep breath and goes to sit in the empty space to Eric’s left. “Hi,” he says, and then chastises himself for such a lame opening. “I’m Malcolm.” He can hear Sarah’s voice in his head. Wow, smooth, good job, A-plus.

Eric looks up and pulls one of his headphones out. “Oh, hi! Sorry, I’m a little tired. I’m Eric, by the way. Malcolm, you said, right?” It all came out in a rush, words tumbling out one after the other, and it was so much different than when Eric spoke to the camera that Malcolm found himself, almost impossibly, more endeared.

“Yeah, Malcolm.” He reaches over to shake Eric’s hand. “I, uh - I love your vlog, by the way.” Malcolm can feel himself blush as he speaks and attempts to reason with his blood vessels. It doesn’t work; blood vessels are notoriously bad listeners, in his experience.

But then Eric blushes too and Malcolm feels infinitely better about it. “Oh my gosh, really? Thank you so much, I’m glad you like it!” He laughs awkwardly. “Sometimes I forget it really is all public.”

 

They go for coffee after class and exchange numbers. Malcolm’s sisters tease him about it mercilessly but the warm feeling in his chest makes it easier to deal with.

Their first unofficial date is to a movie theatre just off campus that gives discounts to students (Malcolm was sure of it - he’d Google’d specifically for ‘student discount movies’) after a hockey game that Samwell lost. Eric is in a bad mood for most of the night and Malcolm tries to cheer him up and it seems to mostly work. They walk back to campus together after that and Eric kisses him softly before disappearing into his dorm building.

Their first official date is to the same movie theatre a week later and they spend the entire movie kissing in the back row. Malcolm couldn’t even remember what movie it had been to tell his sisters later.

It works really nicely for almost the entire semester. Then just after exams, they get coffee, and Eric gives him the You’re nice, but speech. It doesn’t hurt as much as he’d thought it might.

 

4\. Rosie Hunter

Rosie didn’t hate her job, exactly. Her ex-boyfriend William had hated his job, and pushing pencils at the local rec centre wasn’t as bad as shoveling horse manure for eighteen hours a day.

And, well, the kids skating coach had a cute butt and stood in front of her desk for long periods of time. That was just a positive thing all around.

Charlotte was keeping her company when Eric walked out, skate bag over his shoulder, a few minutes after the children had all been taken away by their parents.

“Is that the guy who’s butt you like?” Charlotte asks.

Rosie nods, biting the end of her pen. Charlotte laughs and Rosie just scowls back at her.

“Ducky!” Charlotte says, walking up to Eric. Rosie tries to reach over the counter to grab her sleeve and misses. “It’s been so long! How’s the north treating you.”

Eric laughs and it’s a beautiful, full sound. “Charlotte, call me Eric, please. Anyway, you lost the privilege to call me ‘Ducky’ after you divorced me in the fifth grade for Austin Sanders.”

“This is my friend Rosie,” Charlotte says, leading him over to the desk. “She’s stuck here like you so y’all should commiserate.” She claps her hands together. “Anyway! Gotta get back to work. Have fun, you crazy kids.”

Rosie could kill her, probably.

 

5\. Matthew Wilson

On principle, lacrosse players and hockey players hated each other. It was something about fighting for the right to be Canada’s real official sport, Matt wasn’t sure. He’d played hockey for a few years when he was younger but he’d always liked lacrosse better.

Despite that rivalry, Matt still thought the new hockey player - Bitty or something - who’d just moved in across the street was cute. A few times after particularly wild hockey parties, he’d come by with pies for them.

“You’re not allowed to date the hockey player,” Jonesy had said to him when he’d made an appreciative remark about the guy’s butt.

Matt rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t planning on it.” And it was mostly true - except that Bitty really was cute, and obviously nice if he was giving ‘the enemy’ pies after a party that some of them had attended.

Jonesy was right, Matt had to admit. It was a bad idea to even entertain the idea.

 

“My name’s Matt, by the way,” he says, pulling away from Bitty’s mouth for a second.

Bitty laughs. “Call me Eric. We should probably go upstairs before -”

Someone blows an air horn nearby and they jump apart. “Eric Bittle are you conspiring with the enemy?!”

Bitty - Eric - looks at him apologetically. “Oh well. Nice meeting you, Matt.”

Matt nods. “Yeah, you too.” Before he was even finished, Bitty turns around and jumps on the guy with the air horn’s back. Matt was pretty sure everyone called him ‘Shitty’, but he didn’t really care. He shrugs and walks back across the street.

 

+1. Jack Zimmermann

Crushes were something that Bitty tried not to have, on the whole. It didn’t really matter; so rarely did people like him back. Sure, there’d been Malcolm, but that had never really felt right. So he kind of hated how much he liked Jack. The way his hair was spiked up when they Skyped after one of Jack’s workouts over the winter break of Bitty’s sophomore year, the way he could only identify Taylor Swift on the radio - it was all infuriatingly endearing.

“Do you want to get coffee?” Jack asks simply one morning, same as he had so often before.

Bitty smiles. He can feel that it’s a little tight, a little false, but he hopes that Jack can’t tell. “Sure! Let me get my coat.” He starts to go around the table to get to the front hall closet but Jack steps in his way so that they’re standing nearly chest to chest.

Jack looks down at him and reaches to take his hand. “Just to be clear,” he says. “I mean as a date.”

“Oh!” Bitty can feel himself flush and he hates it. He smiles up at Jack. “That’s - yeah. I’d like that.”

Jack smiles back and steps away. “Good. I’ll get your coat. Wouldn’t want you to freeze when it’s five degrees.”

Bitty rolls his eyes and knocks his shoulder against Jack’s. It was snowing when they walked out the door and Jack put his knit hat on Bitty’s head. Bitty wanted to scowl to show how much he didn’t appreciate being made fun of for his lack of cold tolerance, but as soon as he looked up and saw the way Jack was looking back at him he couldn’t help but smile.

 

 


End file.
